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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

historically? i disagree.
(not saying that that isn't the situation nowadays)

I suppose it depends what you mean by historically. A old colleague of mine at work [not a friend of a friend as often happens in these stories, but actually a colleague I directly spoke to] was given a mobile phone by mistake. He wanted a replacement phone and his network gave him a new one, but it was one with a load of features on he hadn't seen before. These features included GPS tracking, cameras etc - the only thing was this was way before such things were ever made available to the general public.

He spoke to his network about it, and was told that he had been given a phone by mistake that was not intended for public use. He had been given a development phone for government officials or the police, which shows that these tracking and recording devices were tested for a long time before being released into the hands of the general public. While the intention may not have been to 'spy' on the police, it's no leap of faith to see how the police realised - and other associated companies - that spying on users through tracking could be exceptionally useful, easy and over time, lucrative.

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Originally Posted by ondoho

honest FOSS apps exist for android (and most likely for all mobile platforms).

they are there to record sound and take pictures.
people have very real reasons to use them without needing to be "scammed" into it.

They are there to record sound and pictures without the user's consent. They are always listening. This is why you can ask Siri a question and she will respond. This isn't tinfoil hattery, it's well-known, well-documented material which the public choose to ignore because the service they receive is deemed more important than their privacy. This is years-worth of brainwashing and programming, and Google now have their sites set on programming the brains of children from an early age. Saying that things like this are a "nothing news story" or that things are "FUD" is purely denial [notice how in both these linked threads the initial, natural forum response was denial and flaming until people gradually realised the truth].

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Originally Posted by petelq

What I really can't understand at all is, if kids are getting bullied on these sites, why on earth do they keep going back for more?

I don't think it's your age, I think it's exposure. People have always done stupid things. It's just that now there are more people, more stupid things, and more ways to hear about more people doing more stupid things.

No surprise here. "Smart Phones" and any "smart device" is/was designed for the specific purpose of spying on you the user.

If we consider that the entire concept of Android (as acquired and developed on by google) as an OS is that of a "free" OS, which locks/coerces the end user into using google products and services and google are in the ad/data mining business. The devices and their OS are being developed around tracking.

All of this is passed off as "convenience" / features. Whether it be a camera, designed around facial recognition, finger print scanning technology, GPS, contactless payment... whatever. It is all about tracking the individual and mining data. It's the spy you carry around with you - willingly - to pretend otherwise is to be naive. The arguments that the data collection/tracking can be avoided is just not viable. Almost everything with these devices is opt out rather than opt in.

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Originally Posted by ChuangTzu

Most of the paid programs/apps spy on you, and the free apps definitely spy on you.

This has been proven time and again. The apps gather data from you/the device, show ads, etc. I remember that the app called "whatsapp" (?) was harvesting phone numbers, etc.

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Originally Posted by ChuangTzu

The cameras, microphones are there to watch and listen....everything else was just a scam to hook us into using them.

Yes, the public had to be convinced that they needed to carry around a camera, a GPS tracker and a microphone.

If you'd gone to the average person 25 years ago and said "here's a camera, GPS and microphone thing to carry around with you", the answer would most likely have been "what would I want that for"?

If I were to walk around with a 35mm camera around my neck and then periodically use it to take photos. It would annoy people. If I were to take it further and carry around an old fashion camcorder - filming as I go - some people would object or find it odd. If I were to add a large microphone to the mix...

People have been socially engineered to find carrying all of this around in a small box perfectly acceptable. To abandon all concept of privacy and decency in the process.

The cameras and mics on these devices, will eventually be used, via backdoors by government agencies and who knows who else, in the name of "security", it might not be happening yet, but in the future you can bet on it. The first step was to get the masses to depend on them and spend 24/7 welded to the screen - that's working so far as I can tell.

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Originally Posted by ChuangTzu

PSS: This recent facebook discovery is just the beginning

It's already begun, but I'd say this is the tip of the iceberg.

This cannot be put back in the box. It's now beyond repair.

Social pressures are forcing these into society as a whole much more effectively than anything else. Social networks, just snowball and if a kid's friends are in it, they feel pressured to be in it as well - or be an outcast. Once in the network they are then open to abuse from bullies or worse. It's a vicious cycle.

Now that we also have "IoT", the situation worsens. We can be blind to this and just "follow the crowd", or we can look at it subjectively and realise just how absurd it all is.

As someone who remembers the pre mobile phone and pre WWW era, never mind the pre smartphone/IoT era, I find the whole thing utterly ridiculous.

I also find it depressing that we have so many young people who can barely interact without the aid of these devices and social networking.

Facebook/zuckerberg knows he can do as he pleases as the masses of the users he views with utter contempt, will simply come back for more.

google who's "tentacles" are spread throughout the WWW, in the most common Linux based OS, in the most popular browser, in sponsored browsers, in all the different ad services it provides, also knows that it's stranglehold is unmovable.

Some of the Linux users only worried about Microsoft are missing the two bigger elephants in the living room...

smartphones were NOT invented for the "specific purpose of spying on you the user" (and before you anyone brings the iphone into it, have a good read of this).
that's what i meant by "historically".
i don't know what chuangtzu meant. i concede that their statement applies to the current situation.

what really ticked me off about their post is that i could've agreed with almost everything if it wasn't so warped by misinformed half-truth, populist over-simplification and exaggeration.

if you want to draw the public's attention to some bad state of affairs, do it properly, with due diligence.

smartphones were NOT invented for the "specific purpose of spying on you the user" (and before you anyone brings the iphone into it, have a good read of this).
that's what i meant by "historically".
i don't know what chuangtzu meant. i concede that their statement applies to the current situation.

what really ticked me off about their post is that i could've agreed with almost everything if it wasn't so warped by misinformed half-truth, populist over-simplification and exaggeration.

if you want to draw the public's attention to some bad state of affairs, do it properly, with due diligence.

It is a well known fact that governments the world over, are using companies as a way to bypass all privacy and security protocols. In many countries it is illegal for the government to directly spy on you (gather, archive and collate data ad nauseum for future use if needed), however, if the populace is convinced to use a companies service that also collects the same information, they then can sell, rent and give this data to whoever they want, including governments. Whether you want to call it corporatism or fascism or socialism, the name is not necessary since the end result is the same. Government spying, just via a proxy.

As cynwulf said, go back a few years not even 25 years, just go back 10-15 years, and this type of surveillance would have been unthinkable. But, as Lysander pointed out in his links, in the name of convenience we willfully give up our rights without realizing it. Now factor in the movement to have life integrated with these devices and you see the ultimate end game....total surveillance. Want to shop, you need a phone, want to rent a car, you need a phone, need to prove insurance---you need a phone... Why do you think you cannot turn off the surveillance, its on by default, and even when you think its off, it is not off. This was warned about in a wonderful black and white movie called The Twonky (which focused on the new invention of the TV, however, it applies more fully to smart phones). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMIo5Yv0YgI

Pew found that 74% of U.S. adult Facebook users didn’t even know that Facebook maintained information on their advertising interests and preferences in the first place. When Pew directed users to the ad preferences page where some of this information resides, 88% found there that Facebook had generated inferences about them, including household income level and political and ethnic “affinities.” Over a quarter of respondents said the categories “do not very or at all accurately represent them.”

It gets worse. Even when the advertising preferences Facebook had assigned to them were relevant to their real interests, users were not comfortable with the company compiling that information. As Pew reports, “about half of users (51%) say they are not very or not at all comfortable with Facebook creating this list about their interests and traits.”

Location: Earth? I would say I hope so but I'm not so sure about that... I could just be a figment of your imagination too.

Distribution: CentOS at the time of this writing, but some others over the years too...

Posts: 2,482

Rep:

Quote:

Originally Posted by fido_dogstoyevsky

I doubt that we're very far off the time that people like you and me will be stopped at the border and deported because we haven't got facetwit accounts... must be terrists.

I think the US of A has already started doing that, I remember hearing when Trump imposed the "Muslim Ban" that they were supposed to be checking Facebook posts and alike. No doubt other more authoritarian regimes already thought of that, and places like China don't even allow it full stop, because they can't control it.

I think you're right though, it will be standard practice for all governments/regimes sooner or later...

smartphones were NOT invented for the "specific purpose of spying on you the user" (and before you anyone brings the iphone into it, have a good read of this).
that's what i meant by "historically".

I completely get your point, that they were not conceived at the hardware and software level by someone who set out to spy on people... but you should note that ChuangTzu used double quotes to use the loose term for "smart phones" and "smart devices". Your linked article looks at the evolution of the smart phone devices, but it starts very early with devices which are considered to be "smart phones" or their forerunners, but which might not have been thought of as such at the time.

I took this is as "modern smart phones" (+ IoT devices), the hardware and the OS in the modern form. I think it would be better to have said "'smart phones' [in the modern sense] were developed [by Apple/google/whoever] around the needs of data miners/spycos/gov agencies..." or whatever.

But does the wording matter? If one understands the intent in the statement, then picking over the wording may be unnecessarily pedantic.

And if we look at Android, the most popular smartphone OS by far, the tracking, profiling, data mining, etc was facilitated from day one and very much part of the concept - it's why google bought the Android OS and developed it on. That facilitation has only been extended, become more insidious and invasive and more difficult to configure/turn off.

As Android is the number 1 OS, the devices are developed for it, to facilitate the needs of the OS - not really the other way around. If I were a far eastern consumer electronics manufacturer, I'm not going to build a food processor into my phone, if there will be no need for it / no facilitation in the OS/apps.

Let's look at the facts: We have high resolution cameras, geolocation, finger print scanning, facial recognition, voice recognition, pretty much as standard, we cannot continue to delude ourselves that these are just useful toys.

It should have been "enough is enough" a few years ago. Kids certainly should not have these things. Governments should be regulating the things. Instead there is next to no regulation and in most cases, it's only bodies such as the European Court trying to do anything, mostly impotently, about this. You have to wonder why governments are turning a blind eye, but then with revelations such as PRISM, it's not hard to see why.

Location: Earth? I would say I hope so but I'm not so sure about that... I could just be a figment of your imagination too.

Distribution: CentOS at the time of this writing, but some others over the years too...

Posts: 2,482

Rep:

I can remember when there was no such things as social media, smartphones, or even just mobile phones (what we now call "dumbphones"). I can remember when if you had a dial-up Internet connection, "you were the king". It's no surprise to me that with the advent of particularly things like social media, governments, corporations and alike have cottoned onto the fact that; if you want to know what people are thinking, then you can look at their social media accounts, convince them to install a "free app" that records what you like, and bombards you with the relevant ad's and alike.

The point is that this is all part of the same thing, and it's not really actually Facebook, Google, etc to blame. It's really our own stupidity, and more precisely something we call "convenience", that is being milked for all it's worth. So the power is in society's hands, in that; we allow it by posting, by accepting this "convenience". The Internet is really central to it all, as there would be no social media if it were not for the Internet. So maybe we should call it TIOC aka "The Internet Of Convenience".

The sad fact of the matter is that today's generations wouldn't have a clue what it's like to not have things like social media and alike. They would not know how to exist in a world without it, because they have grown up with it, like I grew up with colour TV.

The real question is; who benefits more, us or the government, corporations and alike...?

Quote:

It takes two to tango...

Last edited by jsbjsb001; 02-04-2019 at 10:24 AM.
Reason: forgot "to" and additions

total surveillance. Want to shop, you need a phone, want to rent a car, you need a phone, need to prove insurance---you need a phone... Why do you think you cannot turn off the surveillance, its on by default, and even when you think its off, it is not off.

This is what we're sleepwalking into...

I see the "zombies" on a daily basis, mostly on the train. But even family members just "zone out" when on these things and normal conversation with people who are present becomes a secondary concern. We had family visitors yesterday and one individual who may as well have stayed away, was glued to the screen for the duration of their visit.

Disturbing a zombie from their phone/tablet can make them quite grumpy - like depriving an addict. They affect human behaviour significantly, we really don't know the effects, especially on the generation growing up with them perpetually in their hands.

I still have the same "dumb" phone. Unthinkable for the zombies, where it must be "smart" and they need a new "upgrade" every 12 months or so. It still works, batter life is still good enough. When it finally dies, I'll look for something similar.

And then you have sites that will NOT allow connections if you're using Tor or VPN, because they're determined to collect data on you. Thank God for the deep dark web!! I use Tor and I2P on Slackware for almost everything. Just need a really good Browser like ungoogle-chrome.

Data collection is one major problem and concern that is eerily reminiscent of 1984, however, I think the larger problem is the manner in which the programs/applications are being designed and used to alter human behavior, reprogram our brains with so called brain hacking... This has the potential to "control" massive amounts of people and who knows what the ramifications/long term effects will be, as cynwulf mentioned above. We witnessed a similar problem with certain medications/pharmaceuticals such as Ritalin and others influencing people to kill themselves and/or others.